The Billionaire's Bridal Bid (2 page)

Finally she shrugged and smiled in a way she hoped looked playful instead of beleaguered. “I’m up at four most days making those doughnuts you enjoy so much, Rudy. Most men don’t want to want to bring their date home by six.”

Rudy winced playfully and patted his belly. “There you have it, men. This is your one chance to keep Claire out late.”

At the audience’s laughter, she relaxed a smidge more. Okay, maybe this wasn’t going to be a total disaster.

Rudy winked at her. “Let’s start the bidding at five hundred dollars.”

She felt the floor wobble beneath her. Five hundred dollars? Surely no man in his right mind would pay five hundred dollars to take her on a date.

Just when she thought she’d have to run off the stage to puke, time sped up again and someone in the audience raised his paddle.

“Five hundred,” Rudy said beside her. “Five hundred. Do I have five-fifty?”

Relief flooded her and hot on its heels was curiosity. Who had raised the paddle? Her eyes adjusted to staring out into the dark room and she caught a glimpse of the man holding the paddle. Vic Ballard. No surprise there.

“Do we have five-fifty?” Rudy was still asking. “Going once. Going twice.”

Claire sighed, ready to resign herself to an evening of aerobic grope-dodging.

“Going… Five-fifty, to the gentleman in the back.”

The bidder in the back had flashed his paddle so quickly Claire hadn’t seen more than a flash of white. And with the lights shining in her eyes, she could see only the vague outline of the man’s shape. But whoever he was, people in the crowd recognized him and a murmur spread through the room.

“Do we have six hundred? Six hundred?”

Vic, sitting in the front row, was close enough to the stage that Claire could read his expression. He shifted in his seat, looking over his shoulder. When he turned back, his features had been chiseled into pure determination. His paddle went up.

“Six hundred!” Rudy crowed. “How about seven—” But before he could even finish the question, the paddle in the back flashed. “Seven hundred! Eight hundred? Eight.”

From there the bidding moved with a rapidity that made her head spin. A thousand. Fifteen hundred. Two thousand. Five thousand.

With each twitch of the paddle the numbers grew. As the bidding spun out of control, a preternatural hush fell over the audience. Soon the gaze of every audience member was bobbing back and forth between Vic and the mysterious bidder at the back of the room. If the bidding war alone didn’t make it obvious, the focus of the audience’s rapt attention surely did. This wasn’t about her at all.

This was about the rivalry between these two men. Some age-old competition was being played out before the entire town. And she’d been nominated as the prize.

That realization made her chest tighten and her breath quicken. She could think of only one person whom Vic considered an adversary.

But it couldn’t be Matt. He’d never bid on a date with her. Not ten dollars, let alone ten thousand.

Which was, she now realized, the number Vic had just agreed to.

The pressure in her chest built. Ten thousand dollars. That was so much money. An insane amount.

The bidder at the back must have thought so, too. Because his paddle remained down for an interminable second. And then another. And another.

Beside her, Rudy was babbling. Extolling her virtues, trying to entice the bidder into upping his bid. But the man’s paddle stayed down.

“You’re going to let her go, son?” Rudy prodded.

If the man responded, she still couldn’t see.

Rudy started in again. “Going to Mr. Vic Ballard. For ten-thousand dollars. Going once. Going twice.”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

It was the man at the back. He’d called out what would undoubtedly be the closing bid. And as he spoke, he stepped forward, out of the shadows.

He was dressed in a tux that looked as if it had been made for his tall, lean frame. He wore his hair close-cropped, whereas the last time she’d seen him it had been long and ragged. Still she recognized him immediately. Not just because his image occasionally graced the pages of
Us Weekly
and
OK
magazine.

No matter how he was dressed or what he’d done to his hair, she’d know Matt Ballard anywhere.

T
he morning after the fundraiser, Claire rolled out of bed at four in the morning, contemplating her cowardice.

She’d fled the stage the instant Rudy had banged his gavel, ending the bidding on her date. Quite simply, she’d been unable to face the stunned silence of the crowd. Or their burning curiosity. She’d hurried home, locked the door, unplugged the phone and turned off her cell, ready to bury her head under a pillow like the proverbial ostrich.

Sleep had eluded her, however. For the first time since she’d bought Cutie Pies from her great-aunt Doris Ann, Claire had welcomed getting up at four to make the buttermilk chocolate doughnuts Cutie Pies was known for.

After last night’s bidding war between the Ballard brothers, everyone in town would be wondering what
was so special about Claire Caldiera that a date with her would bring to a head the lifelong rivalry between Vic and Matt. Some of those inquiring minds would probably stop by the diner in hopes of catching a replay of last night’s display. She might as well sell them some doughnuts.

A classic 1950s diner, Cutie Pies sat on Main Street just opposite Luna, the upscale restaurant that had opened up a few years ago. Booths lined the front of the diner, next to the windows looking out onto street. Red Formica tables were scattered throughout, but the real old-timers sat on the leather-topped stools at the bar, where they were closest to the fresh-brewed coffee and they got their eggs mere seconds after they left the griddle. The kitchen in back, where the mixer and ovens were, had a pass-through window, giving Claire a clear view of the front of the diner as she baked.

She’d tuned her radio into the oldies station when she’d first arrived at the diner. Lights from the occasionally passing car flickered through the dining room, but otherwise, she might have been alone in the world. Scraping down the sides of the mixer and humming along to The Shirelles’s “Mama Said,” she could pretend her life hadn’t gone all to hell in the past twenty-four hours.

In fact, she’d nearly convinced herself that what happened the previous night at the fundraiser wasn’t that big a deal. It was, after all, only one date. A single evening. With a man she hated.

No, no. That was too severe. She didn’t
hate
him.

She just really, really,
really
didn’t want to see him again. Was there a word for that?

He was the first man she’d ever trusted with her fragile heart and he’d broken it. He epitomized every bad
decision she’d made in her life. Every mistake. Every wrong turn. Every sacrifice. Seeing him just reminded her of a thousand paths she hadn’t taken. And honestly, that was just the last thing she needed right now.

She poked listlessly at the doughnut batter with her spatula. She’d been feeling so restless lately. So hemmed in by her choices and her responsibilities. She dipped her finger into the batter and scooped up a glob. Sucking it off her finger, she considered her options.

Option One: Grit her teeth and bear it.

Option Two: Hire a professional hit man to take out Matt Ballard.

Option Three: Go home now, toss a bag of essentials into her aging Toyota along with her anemic pothos ivy, Fred, and leave Palo Verde again. Maybe this time forever.

Sadly, Option Three was looking pretty darn appealing.

It would be an escape from the malaise that had settled over her during the past few months. More to the point, it was a way to avoid this date. Which was kind of ironic, because the bachelorette auction thing was supposed to solve the problem of how restless she’d been feeling. It wasn’t supposed to create more problems.

She stuck a different finger into the batter and fished out another bit of batter. It tasted fine. Just…fine. Okay. Bland, bland, bland.

For nearly thirty years, Cutie Pies had been serving the same chocolate doughnuts. They were so…predictable. Feeling twitchy with rebellious impulses, she crossed to the supply pantry, pulled out a jar of cayenne pepper.

The regulars would pitch a fit, come doughnut time,
but it beat the hell out of making a run for it. Which was what she wanted to do.

Running was in her blood. She knew that. Her mother, her father and her sister—they’d all been runners. When life got tough or things got complicated, they just picked up and left. Her father had started the tradition, walking out on his girlfriend and daughters just five days after Claire’s younger sister, Courtney, was born. Their mother had followed suit a few years later. Throughout their childhood, she’d periodically disappear for longer and longer stretches. Each time, when Claire had asked her mother why she was leaving them with their grandparents she’d give some pithy response. Like, “Honey, if you love someone, you’ve got to set her free,” or “Sometimes a woman’s just got to feel the wind in her hair,” or—and this one was Claire’s favorite—“Some people are like sharks. They’ve got to keep moving to stay alive.”

Even at eight, Claire had realized how appropriate the analogy was. Sharks weren’t evil or mean. It was just in their nature to consume everything in their path. Even their own young.

For a long time after that, it was just Claire and Courtney together against the rest of the world. Yes, they lived with their grandparents, but they counted on only each other. She’d thought it would always be that way. Then at fifteen, Courtney had gone a little crazy. Gotten pregnant, run away from their grandparents’ house and gotten into a heap of trouble. Claire had done everything she could to help her younger sister. But in the end, once the baby had been born and safely adopted, Courtney too had run. The last Claire had heard, Courtney lived in Sacramento, less than an hour away, but apparently too far to visit or even call.

Claire promised to herself long ago she’d never be like her mother or sister. She’d never run from her problems. So why was she thinking about it now? Merely because Matt was back in her life? For one measly night?

He was the one man who’d ever told her he loved her. He’d proved years ago that those words had meant nothing to him. It certainly shouldn’t matter now that he’d treated her with as little regard as he treated his endless parade of model girlfriends. So what if he’d bid on her just to show up his brother. His complete disrespect for her may make her want to run, but she wasn’t tying double knots in her Nikes just yet.

By the time she removed the last batch of doughnuts onto the draining board and started on the glaze, her mind was set. Matt would get his date. She’d resent the hell out of him for it, but she’d go. The way she saw it, the resentment was just plain unavoidable. How dare he waltz back into her life after all this time and bid on her only to get back at Vic? How dare he hurt her like that merely as a side effect of showing up Vic?

Suddenly, she wished she’d added even more cayenne to the doughnut batter. Or maybe a dash of chipotle powder.

A glance through the diner’s front windows told her dawn was just beginning to creep over the mountains. If anger wasn’t still simmering in her veins, she might sneak out onto the street to watch the sunrise over the mountains.

Just then, a car drove past, its headlights reflecting briefly on another car, one she hadn’t noticed before now, parked in the spot right in front of the diner.

“Huh,” she mumbled aloud, cocking her head to the side, trying to get a better view of the car. It hadn’t been there when she’d first arrived. Getting up at four to make
doughnuts was the bane of her existence. As far as she was concerned, only an idiot would be out this early without reason. “So who would be out there now?”

The strange car made her more curious than nervous. She’d lived here most of her life and the crime rate in Palo Verde was virtually nonexistent, mostly just kids pulling pranks. There was no way that car belonged to a high school student. It was the kind of car that looked like it was going fast even when it was sitting still.

A glance at the clock told her there were still a good forty minutes before the diner opened. Too early for Jazz, her short order cook, to show up. Way too early for Molly or Olga, her two waitresses, to get here. Bless their college-student hearts, they always waltzed in at the last possible moment.

Besides, they always parked in back. And none of them drove glossy red sports cars. In fact, no one that she knew of in town drove a car that expensive. Or that ostentatious…

“Noooo.”

She abandoned the whisk in the mixing bowl and headed for the front of the diner. Wiping her hands off on the towel she kept tucked in the strap of her apron, she shouldered her way through the swing door. By the bar, she paused, hands propped on her hips as she studied the car through the plate-glass windows. Her suspicions were right. The idiot was Matt Ballard.

Matt Ballard sat in his Lamborghini Murciélago Roadster staring through the window of Cutie Pies, watching Claire bake for far too long. He didn’t even know why he’d stopped. Feeling too restless to sleep in the bed-and-breakfast where he’d booked a room, he decided to head out of town early. His drive down Main
to the highway took him past Cutie Pies. He’d barely registered the well-lit interior of the diner when he found himself pulling into the spot right out front and cutting the engine.

That had been eighteen minutes ago at 5:03 a.m. At first, he’d assumed the lights were just security lighting. The kind of thing that stayed on all night long. But then he’d seen the flickering movement beyond the pass-through window and realized she was in there.

She’d be baking, of course. Cutie Pies was known for its doughnuts and pies. Someone had to get up frickin’ early to make doughnuts for the morning crowd that would start showing up around six. He had trouble imagining Claire as that person.

That must be why he’d sat in his car so long. Because he was having trouble reconciling the idea that Claire was a businesswoman. Someone who got up before five.

The Claire he’d known in college had preferred to sleep until ten. She’d dreamed of designing clothes in New York. She’d loved British punk music and had five holes pierced in her ears. And now she owned a diner? It just didn’t jive.

And like all puzzles it intrigued him. That was why he was here, sitting in his car, straining for a glimpse of her as she drifted gracefully past the opening of the pass-through window.

However, he certainly had enough sense to recognize that this was not healthy behavior. In fact, sitting outside anyone’s place of business in the middle of the night could only be described as creepy. And a little pathetic.

Claire had always had this affect on him. For the few weeks they’d dated in college, she’d simultaneously
brought out the worst and the best in him. Made him impulsive and illogical.

Last night’s blunder was a perfect example. Why had he bid on her? How had he let the bidding get so out of hand? It certainly wasn’t as though he wanted to go out on a date with her. Hell, he never wanted to see her again.

Which meant his best bet would be to put his car in Reverse, leave town before anyone was the wiser and simply let his date with Claire go unclaimed.

His hand was already on the ignition button when he saw her stop at the window and stare out. As if she was looking right at him.

She couldn’t possibly see him, of course. Not in a lit room looking out into the dark. Still, he sensed she knew he was there. His instinct was confirmed when she disappeared for an instant only to reappear at the door in the dining room. She crossed to the door and stood there with her hands propped on her hips, glaring out at the spot his car occupied. When he saw her throwing the lock on the front door, he knew the gig was up and he climbed out of the car.

She was dressed in jeans and a pink T-shirt. Centered on the shirt was the image of a pie anthropomorphized with a wink and smile. The name, Cutie Pies, was scrawled over her right shoulder in a retro font. A white apron was tied around her waist, a towel tucked into it by her hip. Her hair was pulled off her face into a ponytail. Her face was clean of makeup. All in all, she looked far more appealing than any woman had a right to at five-thirty in the morning.

She’d never been conventionally beautiful. Her chin was a little too pointy, her nose a little too broad. Her mouth off balanced, with a perfectly sensible upper
lip and a lush, sensual lower lip. Her face was more interesting than lovely. The kind of face you could spend hours looking at. The kind of eyes you could stare into endlessly, sharply intelligent, but still friendly.

Normally, that is. Today, her eyes were blazing with annoyance. “What are you doing here?”

She managed to make “you” sound like an insult. She stood in the doorway, blocking his way, leaving him standing out on the street. Her hands were still propped on her hips, her chest thrust out belligerently.

The sight of her made something tighten inexplicably in his chest. Indigestion, he hoped. Or maybe a heart attack. That would be better than the other possibility. That some long-buried affection was rearing its head.

He wished she looked worse, but what had he really expected? After all, he’d seen her on the stage just last night. But then, they’d been in a crowded room and separated by a distance of least thirty feet. Now she was mere feet away. And suddenly he was struck by the memory of what it had been like to kiss her. How hungry her mouth had always been beneath his. How her body hummed beneath his touch.

How many women had he dated since Claire? Hundreds, at least. So why was it he couldn’t remember what a damn one of them smelled like, but he could still remember the scent of Claire’s skin like she’d slept with her head on his pillow just last night?

He wanted to shake the memory from his body. To scrape it off his very soul. Every instinct he had roared at him to just turn and walk away.

As if sensing his indecision, she stepped back into the diner. “I’ve got doughnuts to ice. If you’re leaving, just go. If you’re coming in, lock the door behind you on your way in.”

A wise man would have left. And he’d always considered himself on the smart side of brilliant. Still, he followed her into the dining room, sliding the bolt closed on the front door as she’d asked.